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Learn the Truth About Chicken

The ASPCA is excited to announce the launch of a new farm animal campaign focusing on the plight of chickens raised for meat (often called “broiler” chickens). Roughly 8.5 billion chickens are raised in the U.S. annually, most on squalid factory farms where there is no government oversight of their treatment.

The issue is not just the treatment of chickens, though: it’s that modern chickens are selectively bred to grow so large, so fast, that they struggle to simply move or stand.

Today’s chickens are bred to have such massive and disproportionate bodies that they often collapse and spend most of their lives lying helplessly in their own waste. Many have open wounds, which act as gateways to infections that can be passed on to people. Don't be fooled: Most chickens who wind up on American dinner plates bear no resemblance to the healthy-looking, active birds you may have been led to expect.

The ASPCA is calling on the chicken industry to do better—but to make sure they’re paying attention, we need to show them that people like you care about how chickens are raised, too.

By insisting on slower-growing chickens and better conditions, we can reduce suffering and raise healthier birds who may be less likely to spread dangerous infections like salmonella. But to get the chicken industry to move in the right direction, they need to see that people like you are paying attention—and counting on the industry to do what’s right for chickens and consumers.

Comments

Sharon, try to get even ONE commercial chicken farm to let you take a tour and look at their animals. THEN try to tell us they care about their birds. Not grandma down the street with 10 in the yard, a COMMERCIAL grower.

Salt, also known as table salt or rock salt (halite), is a crystalline mineral that is composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of ionic salts. It is essential for animal life, but can be harmful to animals and plants in excess. Hint hint farm lady... you say farmers are the salt of the earth however salt is harmful to animals!!!!

Growers?? We aren't talking about plants, these are sentient, feeling beings. Chickens are actually as smart as a 3 year old child and have over 30 different vocalizations. They can do simple math and remember objects and placement, such as a shell game! They can identify individuals too, have complex social lives, just like other birds we haven't been conditioned to think of as "food"
As a Christian, I am to be a GOOD steward of what GOD has created. HE loves and cares for ALL HE has created! Christ likens HIS love for us as a Hen to it's chick. As an animal lover and a vegan, I find it repulsive eating flesh, blood and bone and it is actually an abomination to GOD! There are over 150 laws against eating meat in the Bible and GOD in the beginning gives us a PLANT-based diet "The FRUIT of the TREES and the SEEDS of the EARTH shall be FOOD FOR ALLLIVING THINGS"- NO mention of meat-eating until after the fall of man. It was Paradise because NOTHING suffered, felt pain, died and there was no murder or killing!
Also the farms that this article refers to our factory farms where hundreds of thousands of birds are kept in cages smaller than a sheet of paper and stacked 8 feet and upwards on top of eachother. They spend their lives covered in urine and feces with open wounds. That is way these "farms" use 80% of our antibiotics and we now have superbugs that threaten our health. Factory farms are major sources of pollution- 18% of CO2, thousands of rivers, lakes and waterways contaminated. It is no wonder we have recalls from salmonella and listeria, etc.
The conditions these birds and ALL farmed animals endure is atrocious and MUST END!! It is inhumane and extremely unhealthy!

I am sure there are many farmers that place their animal's well being first. After all, poor or ill product does not sell or not at a profit,but the sad truth is that there are growers out there that just do not see the animals as living beings that suffer and feel pain. I stopped eating meat about a year ago because of the, many times, inhumane slaughter practices. Do not get me wrong... I LOVE meat,but I made a choice. I know not all practices are inhumane and when that life is treated with respect for the ultimate sacrifice it makes for our lives I may again eat meat. Just do not make a generalized comment accusing "all" growers of poor husbandry.

Chickens are somewhat fragile. I know chicken houses aren't necessarily their first choice, but they are kept cool in warm weather, warm in cold weather, well fed and watered. If they were lying in their own waste, they couldn't make it to the feed to grow like the ASPCA contends. I am not a chicken grower, but we have plenty of them around here. I DO have knowledge as to how they are raised.